


run boy run

by kingblake



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Inej comes home + kaz misses her a lot, Kaz is learning!, PTSD, Post Crooked Kingdom, kind of a character study?, learning to cope, learning to touch again, no kisses this time sorry :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 04:06:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9640046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingblake/pseuds/kingblake
Summary: It's been three weeks since her last visit. Kaz is restless, as usual, and though he's been swamped with paperwork and territory battles and deals with corrupt councilmen, his mind is loud, unfocused, buzzing with unwanted noise and unwarranted thoughts that seem to flit back and forth like a spooked owl. "Inej," his mind likes to tell him. "She's hurt, something's happened."— or —Kaz really wants Inej to come home. But what happens when she does?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I love writing as kaz holy shit?? He's such a complex and wonderful character and I couldn't have asked for a better son??? Anyway he's so whipped for Inej and he doesn't even know it tbh,, he's so soft and beautiful and kind and I hope he gets everything he ever wants ever

It's been three weeks since her last visit. Kaz is restless, as usual, and though he's been swamped with paperwork and territory battles and deals with corrupt councilmen, his mind is loud, unfocused, buzzing with unwanted noise and unwarranted thoughts that seem to flit back and forth like a spooked owl. "Inej," his mind likes to tell him. "She's hurt, something's happened."

At every clang of the Tidemaker bell he jumps to his feet. He waits for the seven bells, and when they don't come, he sinks back into his chair, a dull headache throbbing through his head. He resigns to the fact that he's probably just losing too much sleep and returns to his work, signing and reading and working until the words blur together on the page and his forehead drops to the desk, landing with a dull thud against the polished mahogany.

Three weeks of this go by, three weeks of sleepless nights and agonizingly long days filled with restless gang members and rowdy gamblers and suspicious letters from a privateer called Sturmhond (none of the messengers can make any sense of them, they all seem to be written in some type of code) — and then he _feels_ it.

He's sitting at his desk, gloves on his lap, and he's stretching out his cramped fingers because he's been writing for hours — and then he feels it. His heart does a gymnastics routine in his chest, thudding against his ribcage so loudly he swears the Fjerdan queen can hear it all the way from her throne in the Ice Court. There's a soft buzzing feeling near the back of his neck, just under his ears and around the curls of hair he's let grow out. A soft breeze blows past his cheek and he pushes himself back from the desk, turning slowly to face his visitor. "What business?" He asks, and his voice is a soft echo of the ragged stone-on-stone cadence it had once been.

A smile curls the corners of her lips, and if Kaz could only remember one thing for the rest of his life, he thinks it might be that exact moment.

"Hello, Kaz," she says, and he nearly crumples in on himself. She says his name with reverence, and for a moment he basks in it, heart thundering out a stuttering rhythm in his chest. She says his name the way she might say the name of one of her Saints, the way she might murmur a Suli blessing or a Suli proverb. It hits him in the head like a brick, like a good right hook during a brawl in a tavern. She says his name like she says her gospel, and the realization makes him go blind with unprecedented joy. He lets his eyes slide shut, and for a long while the two of them are silent, listening to each other breathe in the late afternoon silence.

After a moment of silence, he blinks his eyes back open, chest filled with something warm and bright and beautiful. He instinctively checks his pulse, making sure he isn't hallucinating from lack of sleep (it's happened before) and surely enough, his heartbeat is there, strong, pumping as well as ever. _Alive, alive, alive_ , it tells him, each beat of his pulse against his fingertips a welcome reminder of what remained of his sanity. He flicks his gaze to Inej, cheeks filled with unwanted heat, and tips his head to the side, one hand finding its way to the curls of new hair on the sides of his head. He knots his fingers in the short black lengths, letting out a heavy breath.

It scares him, he thinks, how he can survive tavern brawls, broken bones, stab wounds, gunshot wounds, and the unrelenting despair that Ketterdam seems to have no shortage of — but the moment she says his name, simple as buttering toast or signing a contract, the Bastard of the Barrel is on his knees, a trembling mess of confusion and pounding pulses and rattling bones. It scares him, he thinks, how in one instant he wants to put as much distance between the two of them as humanly possible — and moments later, his fingers will itch to slide into her sheaf of black hair, to press his mouth to the warm hollow between her collarbone and her chin where her heartbeat, steady and true, beats out a tone as comforting as any cozy fireplace or warm cup of tea.

"How long?" He finally croaks out, and she opens her eyes, a smile quirking the corners of her mouth into submission.

"Four weeks," she tells him, and he feels like his heart just might tear out of his chest and do a dance routine on the floor between them. A four week resting period for her sailors, her little ragtag crew of privateers who manned her little cannon and the great black sails that glowed purple in the sunlight. Her sailors had requested a four week leave, in which they'd visit their families and take a break from being on the ocean. Four weeks in which Inej would remain planted firmly at the Crow Club, if Kaz was so lucky.

She tilts her head at him, and he realizes that he's grinning like a fool. "You're certainly happy about that," she says with a purr of laughter. Kaz thinks he might keel over from embarrassment, but he remains planted firmly in his chair, bad leg propped out in front of him, one hand resting against the back of his neck and the other settled lightly on his lap.

She's seated on his windowsill, knuckles white against the dark grain of the wood, and for a moment, Kaz wishes she would stay there, her oil black eyelashes fanned across her cheeks and the sun warming her skin and her lips parted as though she's about to say something but can't quite find the words. Kaz wants to reach out and take her face in his bare hands, trace her jaw with his thumbs and smooth the worried line between her eyebrows and run his fingertips over the length of her eyelashes, just to feel them for himself.

But he doesn't.

He wants to.

But he _doesn't_.

And he wants to scream.

He's getting better at touching. He is. During her visits, the short ones, he'd do his best to touch her at least once. He didn't want to, he'd tell himself, but then he _did_ , and after he'd truly felt the warmth of her skin for the first time his fingers had burned for more, to touch any skin other than his own. It started small, a small brush of their knuckles when they had been walking side by side, each touch cracking like lightning through his limbs.

 _I'll have you without armor_ , she'd said, _or not at all._

But he'd gotten better. She'd allowed him to test his boundaries against her, with light touches and deliberate encounters, and when he'd found within himself a strange burst of courage, he'd spent a very long time letting his fingertips traverse the dips and ridges of the back of her hand, the veins and tendons and rough knuckles becoming as familiar to him as the face that stared back at him in the mirror every day.

She'd been patient with him. He'd been very slow to adapt, to learn. But she'd been patient. He'd slaved through each private encounter, working until the soft give of her skin no longer reminded him of his brother's waterlogged corpse but of _Inej_ , all warmth and sunlight and honey-laughs and golden eyes. He'd managed to hold her hand, once. The moment lasted fifteen seconds across, but Kaz had gripped her nimble fingers for what had seemed like an eternity.

She had been motionless on the dock, watching the black water of the Ketterdam harbor rise and recede, crash lazily against the bottom of the docks as the Tidemakers pulled the currents in and out to help control traffic flow on the coasts. Kaz had ambled up to her, as usual, and peeled off his gloves to let his fingers breathe. He'd bent, set them on the dock between his feet, then let his hands fall to his sides, one of his knuckles brushing Inej's as gently as a kitten's whisker on a child's face.

She'd tipped her head towards him, one eyebrow rising expectantly, then began to turn her hand towards him; a routine the two of them had worked out long ago. Her palm faced the side of his leg, fingers splayed in an open invitation, and though his entire body buzzed with the need to grab her fingers, he kept his eyes on her face, mouth a grim slash across his angled features.

Her hand was right there, waiting, and Inej was ready to let him hold her — and yet all he could think of was Jordie, the bodies piled high on the Reaper's Barge. He didn't want to risk those memories again. He didn't want her to see him break.

"I can't." He'd rasped, and then she'd nodded once and dropped her hand.

"It's all right." She'd said with a small smile. "Maybe next time." She'd flexed her fingers at her side, Kaz's eyes following the motion, and then something sharp and insistent flared up in his mind, roaring so loudly he fought the urge to clap his hands over his ears and fall to the deck.

_There might not be a next time._

They'd spent months doing this dance, with Inej asking, offering, and Kaz being unable to give. She was a privateer, Kaz realized like a slap to the face. She put herself in danger daily to rescue the young girls on the slaver ships. As much as Kaz trusted her ability to defend herself and her crew, there was no guarantee she'd make it back home on her next leave. There was no guarantee she'd make it home alive.

Kaz scrubbed his hand across his jaw and sucked in a rattling breath.

"What if there's not?" He'd asked. She'd made a mess of him, and he'd thanked whatever Saints she'd worshipped that they were the only two on the dock — even with the wind battering his legs and tossing his hair into a tousled mess, he could tell that his hands were shaking — and not lightly. He pushed them through his hair, hoping the motion would mask the shaking, but the flick of Inej's eyes towards the top of his head told him she'd noticed.

She let out a soft sigh, tipping her head backwards. "Don't think like that," she said, her voice warmer than he'd ever heard it. "My crew is strong and my Saints are behind me." Her hand, the one she hadn't reached for him with, floated towards the knife strapped to her left thigh. She was graceful as ever, Kaz noted, and for a short moment he could only think of how much he wanted her to teach him to move like that, like he was an acrobat, a dancer.

A flicker of movement fluttered below him and with a swift glance, his black glass eyes found something that pushed his heart straight into his throat.

She'd extended her hand again, and for a few fleeting instants the entire world had stopped turning and the wind had stopped blowing. For a moment, there was only Kaz and Inej and the salty air and the crash of waves and then —

He felt himself extend his hand. Slowly, _slowly_ —

His fingertips grazed her palm. Thunder cracked through his limbs but he'd trained himself for this — he'd spent hours preparing himself, locating the tendrils of anguish in his brain and forcing them back, back into the dark place they'd come from. He reached for the warmth emanating from her palm, the hard lines and ridges of her callouses and scars.

He grabbed hold of the feeling of her skin, and then he'd worked his fingers between hers, eyes wide, hoping his face wasn't as red as it felt. She'd grinned at him, then, eyes switching between their intertwined hands and his steadily reddening cheeks, and although Kaz fought to keep himself above the black water he'd couldn't help but think how much he loved seeing her smile —

And then it was over.

The ocean closed over his head and her hand filled with fluid and her skin, hard and rough, became pliant and pulpy. Kaz yanked his hand away like he'd decided to let it come to rest on a hot stove and he shoved it in his pocket, shoulders tight with fear.

Her grin hadn't faltered.

A glance down — her hands were normal.

Gripping the head of his cane with his opposite hand, he couldn't help but let a flash of confusion overtake his features. "What?" He'd asked, and she'd just smiled and brushed a stray hair from his shoulder.

"Thank you," she'd said. And then she'd stepped past him, on her way back to her ship. "No mourners," she'd called, and a flicker of hope flared to life in his chest.

"No funerals," he'd responded quietly, and then he'd watched her leave.

But that had been then.

This was now.

Inej's soft voice shakes him from his reverie, her tone warm and kind. "You've grown out your hair," she points out, eyes half-lidded with contentment. It doesn't miss Kaz that she only looks like that when she's with him, in his room, and the thought puts a buzz of electricity in his fingertips.

He wants to go to her, to tell her just how happy he is that she's staying for so much longer.

He stands up.

He pushes his ungloved hand through his hair, and with the beginnings of a smile he makes his way towards her, gait uneven and painful without his cane.

"It's the newest style. Apparently the undercut wasn't scaring people as much as it used to." Kaz shuffles his fingers through the hair on the side of his head. "Thought I might try something new." He's close to her now, only a foot away, and from here he can see the little scar in her eyebrow, the curve of her lower lip, the divot in her cheek left by her smiles.

She opens her eyes to look at him, and Kaz swears he can feel the pressure in the room rise. She lifts her hand expectantly, and Kaz realizes he's got his head tipped forwards, and he's standing practically between her knees. She's perched on his windowsill, balanced on the balls of her feet, and Kaz is afraid if he gets any closer she might pitch backwards into the alley.

But he's more worried about her hand. It's inches from the side of his head, brushing the tips of his newly-grown curls. She raises her eyebrows, a knowing question.

Kaz sucks in a rattling breath.

Despite everything in him that tells him to say no, he jerks his head up in a nod. He lets his eyes slide shut, prepares himself for the black water and the suffocation —

A beat.

The fear doesn't come.

What he feels instead is much more like fireworks and warmth and joy and everything Ketterdam can't seem to offer — and he _loves_ it. He dips his head into her palm, basking in the feeling of her fingers massaging his scalp, and for a moment Jordie and his reputation and every bad thing he's ever done disappear, vanishing into thin air along with what's left of his self control.

His knees wobble underneath him and Inej snakes her other hand around his waist, anchoring him in place, and then he lets out a breath and drops his head into the crook between her shoulder and her chin. She smells like sea salt and leather and traces of vanilla — Kaz thinks he might ask her about that later — and when his nose grazes the pulse at her throat he's sure might pass out.

The lightning crack is there, but it's softer. Subdued.

And there, in that moment, Kaz Brekker has a sudden, unsettling thought (he's in _love_ , he thinks) that calms the lightning in his veins and the heat in his cheeks.

He lets out a hot, unmistakably steady breath against Inej's neck.

"Welcome home."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! Go ahead and give this some kudos or drop a comment bc if it gets enough I might add a special bonus chapter ;))) tell me if u liked it tho!! Catch me on twitter @kaszbrekker ! :)


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